Social Impact and War's End

Views of the War in America

• Before 1942, American views were divided on US response to war in Europe, the America First Committee had eight hundred thousand members - most members claimed that intervention would militarize daily life and undermine civil liberties

• After Pearl Harbor most Americans now favored a military response especially vs Japan

• over 6 million people voluntarily joined the military

Quit India Movement

India wanted Independence from British rule, Britain chose to imprison leaders and 30,000 supporters including Ghandi and Nehru

• Many Indians, Arabs, and Africans protested the disjuncture between the allied gov’ts democratic ideals and the injustice of life under British and French imperial rule

G.I. Bill of Rights (1944)

A law signed by FDR to aid returning World War II veterans 

• It provided benefits such as funding for college or vocational education, government-backed loans for homes, farms, or businesses, and unemployment pay to help veterans reintegrate into civilian life.

Western Investment

Cheap land and less expensive labor meant the growth of military industry in the west

• people from across the nation moved military industrial complexes for jobs in service of the war

• many western states saw significant growth

Full Mobilization

Propaganda combined American racist views of the Japanese and desire to avenge Pearl Harbor to motivate defense workers and soldiers and used to motivate conservation movement at home

• The US gov’t relied on American patriotism and voluntarism to enforce rationing of supplies for the war effort

War Production Board (WPA, 1942)

Regulated all military and civilian production and allocated materials to ensure the armed forces received necessary supplies

Office of Price Administration (OPA)

Controlled prices to prevent inflation, and price scalping, it also controlled rationing of many goods and materials needed for the war effort

Office of War Information (OWI)

In the US they controlled news and propaganda to encourage support of the war, abroad they spread information of the Nazi’s Italians, and Japanese while displaying them as monsters often through caricatures

Zoot Suit Riots

Due to the Great Migration during WWII as jobs opened in industrial cities bc of the war, it brought many racial groups to be in close proximity

In LA, sailors attacked groups of Mexican Americans who wore Zoot Suits, baggy dress clothes, because the white sailors believed they weren’t abiding by war conservation efforts. The police arrested the young Mexican American boys instead of the sailors.  

Rosie the Riveter

Women took the jobs of men in industry, they worked in factory jobs, assembling war products, secretarial work, etc., many felt prideful in their jobs but did not receive same pay as men and were still expected to return home at wars end

• the image of Rosie the Riveter was a symbol of power for women

• woman of all races worked

Hedy Lamar

Designed, with her neighbor, a frequency hoping system for use in Torpedos - basis of modern frequency hoping used in most modern secure wireless technology

• the design was ignored til 1957, likely due to a combination of her being an Austrian immigrant and being a women

A. Phillip Randolph - WWII

There was a greater number of black workers in industrial jobs but they faced wage and housing discrimination, Randolph threatened to protest with a 100,000-man March on Washington. FRD soon issued an executive order banning discrimination in defense industries 

Double V Campaign

African Americans called for victory over fascism abroad and over racism at home

• illustrated the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy abroad with a segregated army and society - Congress for Racial equality (CORE)

Braceros

A shortage of labor during WWII in the southwest led to an agreement with the Mexican and US gov’t to import 219,000 Mexican workers legally

• Managed by the Department of Agriculture

Civil Liberties and Ethnic Discrimination

The Smith Act (Alien Registration Act of 1940) → Criminalized any speech that advocated overthrow of US gov’t, limited free speech

• Germans faced less discrimination than WWI, but some were still sent to detention camps, 14000 Germans and Italians were arrested and 5000 jailed

Executive Order 9066

Sent Japanese Americans to interment camps, not mattering whether they were immigrants or US born

• sent about 110,000 into interment camps with more than 2/3 being US born

• Korematsu v. US →upheld the constitutionality of the governments right to have the camp but there needed to be proof of disloyalty in the case of Japanese Americans born in the States

• Most Japanese Americans permanently lost their homes, businesses, and any assets 

D-Day

Allied invasion of Normandy, France, in 1944, which involved landing troops on the beaches and behind the lines to begin the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany

• About 160,000 troops landed in Normandy in the first wave of the attack and the whole invasion would use about 3 million personnel

Total War

Nations utilized unrestricted bombing of military and civilian targets, like in WWI and WWII

V-E Day and V-J Day

Victory over Europe Day, May 8 1945

Victory over Japan Day, Sept. 2 1945

Manhattan Project (atomic bomb)

Research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons

• July 1945, Nuclear bomb tested in New Mexico

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• On July 26 1945, US and Britain demanded Japanese unconditional surrender or face destruction

• On August 6, America used an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and on August 9 the US bombed Nagasaki with another Atomic bomb

• Led to eventual surrender of Japan on Aug. 14

• First use of Atomic weapon in war

J. Robert Oppenheimer

The director of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. He is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in overseeing the development of the first nuclear weapons

• he advocated for the creation of the United Nations and the Atomic Energy Commission

Bretton Woods

The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference that planned out global monetary regulations, 44 nations established :

• Benton Woods economic system  every country fixing their currencies to an anchor currency (the US dollar) and the value of the anchor currency was fixed to gold

• World Bank → to help re-build post war economics 

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

A global organization of 191 member countries that works to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, and reduce poverty, created at Bretton Woods

United Nations

A global intergovernmental organization founded in 1945 to promote peace, security, and international cooperation

• first meeting in April of 1945, 50 nations met in San Francisco, and the U.N. Headquarters in NYC on land donated by the Rockefeller Family